Prayer Day Double-Teamed

Two groups of worshipers will gather today at the Ventura County Government Center to participate in the National Day of Prayer.

They will sing and pray to God. They just won’t do it together.

Saying the Day of Prayer event at the government center is increasingly being taken over by conservative Christians to the exclusion of other faiths, a group of clergy will hold its own interfaith celebration today.

It will be the first time since the event began in the early 1990s that there will be separate prayer services across from the government center. It’s a welcome change, say ministers participating in the interfaith service today. Although the National Day of Prayer is supposed to be nondenominational, critics say it has long had a distinctly Christian feel.

Last May, participants in the Day of Prayer event at the government center protested abortion rights.

Ventura County religious leaders are not alone in seeking an alternative. Separate prayer events will take place across Southern California as clerics seek to inject an interfaith emphasis in the event.

That was the goal of Rabbi John Sherwood of Oxnard, president of the Ventura Interfaith Ministerial Assn., when he started planning the local interfaith event a year ago. He was aided by a local Muslim leader, a Unitarian minister and several local Christian pastors.

Today’s interfaith gathering will take place at 9 a.m. across from the government center. The second National Day of Prayer gathering is at noon.

“This is a statement that Ventura County celebrates diversity and that no one religion has the right to dominate the American cultural scene,” Sherwood said. “The founders of this nation pictured a nation of diversity.”

It’s not about religious domination, said Fawn Parish of Ventura’s South Coast Fellowship Church. Those who have come to previous prayer events know they are getting a healthy serving of New Testament scriptures and plenty of unabashed tributes to Jesus Christ, said Parish, who helped organize the noontime prayer service today.

“In our heart it is to be inclusive,” said Parish, who presided over last year’s gathering. “But it’s not time to sit down and sing ‘Kumbaya.’ This is not a conversion day. We believe Jesus is distinctive.”

Parish said that bringing together Christians and non-Christians in an organized prayer service is akin to “diluting it or mixing the paint to the point where there is no color at all.”

Observance of National Day of Prayer on the first Thursday of May was declared by President Reagan in 1988.

Bringing different faiths together was never the intention of the annual nationwide prayer gathering, said Jim Weidmann, vice chairman of the National Day of Prayer Task Force, a conservative Christian group in Colorado Springs, Colo., that is among the largest organizers of Day of Prayer events.

Both Weidmann and Parish said they aren’t opposed to non-Christian prayer events. Just don’t expect them or those they represent to attend.

“If you mix [faiths], you are not holding true to the expressions you believe and we are trying to hold true to the Christian expression,” Weidmann said. “It comes down to a simple decision like on Sunday. Where are you going to go to church?”

In the San Fernando Valley, several church officials from different denominations will meet today at Valley Beth Shalom Temple in Encino for their second interfaith service, said Barry Smedburg, executive director of the San Fernando Valley Interfaith Council.

The interfaith service will be held for the first time at the temple, said Smedburg, adding that organizers expect to attract their biggest attendance.

Smedburg said the council formed its own prayer group two years ago after attempts to share the stage for the annual service with evangelical groups failed.